Provided by Beaverton Historical Society

How about those Common Core State Standards (CCSS), huh?  Not quite sure how they came about?  Here’s a nitty gritty summary.

Way back, like, 30 years ago, each school district adopted its own curriculum.  Schools set their own benchmarks.  Teachers determined pass or failing grades.  It was commonplace for families that moved to other cities and states to discover their child was either behind or ahead of the class, depending on where they’d moved from.  Disparity between social situations and culture was rampant.

Dr. Ed Hirsh, an English Professor, took it upon himself to address the latter issue by writing a scholarly article (1983) that he turned into a book, entitled Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987).  He formed the Core Knowledge Foundation in 1986.  Shortly thereafter, he and selected contributors wrote a set of books for parents to support educating their 1^st – 6^th grade students, e.g., What your First Grader Needs to Know.  Other written stuff that influenced the evolution of education included  A Nation at Risk by the National Commission of Excellence in Education and Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind.  The point is that collective outcome-based education standards had been born.

The federal government responded with an education summit in 1989 that included all fifty state governors and President (George H.W. Bush), resulting in the adoption of some new national education goals, (i.e., content standards), for the following year.  The Clinton Administration enacted a standards-based approach to education in 1994 with the passing of an updated version of the old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which had originally been created in 1965.

The updated ESEA included three separate laws:  the Goals 2000 Act, the School-to-Work Act, and the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  (Read this for further info about the debate over “federalizing” American education, e.g., “Designed on the German system, the Tucker plan is to train children in specific jobs to serve the workforce and the global economy instead of to educate them so they can make their own life choices.”)

ESEA was basically renamed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) by the Bush Administration in 2001. Since many of the goals have yet to be fully “attained,” NCLB is still in effect today.

At some point during National Education Summits, corporate CEOs got involved.  This bi-partisan board, established in 1996, was dubbed Achieve.  In 2009, Achieve, the Governors Association, and the Council of Chief Officers (CCSSO) created what we now so lovingly call CCSS.

It’s curious that we never hear anything more about the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21).  This was also a consortium of business and education leaders bent on updating American education standards.  P21 received $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Education to set up shop in 2002.  I haven’t found any other mention of P21’s involvement in creating CCSS, other than on their outdated website.  However, there’s no doubt that P21 was and still is as a stakeholder in CCSS.  What exactly happened to the original organization?

Obscure Sources:

In addition to the above hyperlinks, I found one (outdated) blog that is…er, was devoted entirely to No Child Legislation.  It offers a great summary of the history leading up to the creation of NCLB.